


lonely hearts and other stories

by firstaudrina



Category: Gossip Girl
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-29
Updated: 2014-07-29
Packaged: 2019-02-13 15:29:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12987012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstaudrina/pseuds/firstaudrina
Summary: One day he didn't love Blair, and then one day he did; it's as easy as that, sometimes.





	lonely hearts and other stories

_his_

When he tells the story to his typewriter, Dan says it began with a kiss, but that isn't right; sometimes he says it started two rows away at the movies, but that isn't it either. Finding the clear beginning is a pointless exercise in trying to fictionalize his own life, find narrative sense in a world that doesn't have a linear beginning-to-end that clocks in at two hours, five minutes. One day he didn't love Blair, and then one day he did; it's as easy as that, sometimes.

But if pressed he'd say it probably had something to do with a sad girl standing alone in the middle of her friend's wedding, because he's partial to girls like that.

 

 

_hers_

Exactitude and denial are Blair's hallmarks, though she usually falls short of the former and pretends she doesn't do the latter. So normally she'd say she only really loved one man in her life and she married him, but normally Blair lies through her teeth without even knowing she did it.

It wasn't exactly an _aha!_ moment but once upon a time she stood next to Dan and watched a boy she will later say she never loved get into a car with a girl Dan never loved either. Dan looked at her or she looked at him, either way their eyes met and shared the same betrayal, the same hurt, the same resignation. Nate and Vanessa drove off into the sunset and Blair walked away from Dan, but she felt something then, something like kinship. It would be years before she'd let herself feel it again.

 

 

 

 

 

_his_

There are things Dan knows, even if rationality would deem them bullshit. He knows Blair needed something that she could only get from him, even though once she got it she was gone. He knows for the better part of two years she didn't just keep him around, she sought him out, and for the better part of two months, she looked at him like he was the only person she wanted to see. It's not all ego, his or hers. It couldn't be.

These are just facts, just things Dan knows; once he meant something to her and no one in the world can convince him he didn't.

 

 

_hers_

At the end of the day, this is it. At the end of the day, when Blair craves seclusion and safety, she goes to Dan. For pizza she doesn't normally eat, and movies, and falling asleep on his shoulder, because he will always let her. It means having no defenses because Dan will not stab her in the back so long as she's honest with him, and that's just about Blair's nightmare, just about the worst thing she can think of.

She remembers that night, the sky outside his window streaked orange and violet over the Brooklyn buildings: bright sunset orange alighting on brick, the shadows a deep, clear purple. _Isn't that what love is?_ she wondered then. _The world done up in Technicolor?_

She learned that on movie screens. She learned a lot of things there.

 

 

 

 

 

_his_

The worst part is not feeling alone anymore. Dan's loneliness is like an old friend, a shield, and he used to make jokes about it to his family, that he was a loner and liked it. He has never not been set apart from the people around him, so he'll take his loneliness and wear it and then it won't hurt him anymore.

But with Blair it's as though someone else has stepped inside the little room where only Dan exists. No one else has been in the room before. It's not just knowing his references and decimating his arguments and liking Radiohead. Blair has figured him out, she doesn't pull punches, she doesn't trust anyone but she needs _him_.

And when she's gone, it feels less like a joke, less like a shield, less like a metaphor he made up to make himself feel better. It just feels like he's alone, but worse, because he knew what it was like not to be.

 

 

_hers_

Blair goes home and reads _Inside_ cover to cover. Then she reads it again.

She almost wishes she hadn't; it was much better when she could compliment font choices and be indignant about sex that never happened (indignant or jealous, so close for her). But to sit down and read every word twice –

She didn't think Dan knew her like that. She didn't think Dan, of all people, knew her expressions and her voice so well, the way she holds herself, the way she wears her hair. That Dan could know her with such horrible intimacy without her allowing him to, that Dan could know her and not just the things she says. That he could replicate her down to the last horrible detail but render her inexplicably loveable at the same time – because who could really know her, and love her anyway?


End file.
